During His life on earth, Jesus told a parable about four types of people in the parable of the sower: the unsaved (Mark 4:15), the wishy-washy Christians (Mark 4:17), the worldly Christian (Mark 4:18-19), and the fruitful Christian (Mark 4:20). Let's look at the verses describing the worldly Christian: "And others are the ones sown among thorns. They are those who hear the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful" (Mark 4:18-19). At Sunday school recently, my teacher asked us which type of soil we are. You know, I would have to say that many times, this soil describes me more than the good, fruit-bearing soil. The "cares of the world" and "desires for other things" can choke God's Word and His power in my life. I'm not as fruitful as I could be because I'm caught up with the things of this life. Let's look at what some of these things could be.
- Media can distract us and dull our walk with the Lord. We can get caught up with movies, internet, social media, emails blogs, music, cell phones, texting, etc. that we spend a lot of our time and money on media and then, we we do sit down to read the Bible or pray, our minds are so full of media that it's hard to concentrate and focus.
- While people are important in our relationship with God (as we'll look at later), they can also be a distraction from Him. Whether it's family, friends, acquaintances, (guys!) etc. it is easy to let relationships with people become more important to us than our relationship with the Lord. The stimulation of an actual person can sometimes lessen our desire to be with God because we can't physically see or touch Him.
- Getting caught up with books and focusing more on reading than the Lord, whether it be fiction, non-fiction, Christian books, etc. can be something that pulls us away from Him. When we would rather read a book, even about God, than read His Word, books are weakening instead of strengthening our love and relationship with Him.
- What about money? Also in that verse Jesus talked about "the deceitfulness of riches". Into this category could fall work, finances, worry about money, etc. When we are so caught up with money and greed, we can easily lose sight of the provision of the Lord and our love of money can lesson our love for God.
- We have such busy lives. Running from one activity to the next, there is always somewhere to be, something to do, and someone to meet. This busyness can easy weaken our love for God. For one, we're so busy that we find it hard to carve out time with Him and second, because we are so "over-stimulated" by always doing things, it's hard to rest in the wonder of the presence and love of Christ.
You'll notice that things I mentioned above aren't bad in and of themselves. Still, any of them can easily distract us from the Lord and weaken our relationship with Him. Even from these things, many of which are good, we may need to take a break and set aside or lesson our intake in order to make room for the things in our lives that strengthen and refresh our walk with the Lord. (We'll look more at what some of those things are in our next post.) Our God always needs to be first, as He said, "you shall have no other gods before me" (Exodus 20:3).
There are also definitely "bad", sinful, evil things that have no place in our lives that can fall into any of these categories, as well as categories of their own. If we are living in sin, our relationship with God is going to be dull. We need to run from sin, confess it, and turn away from it, finding victory in Christ. As we turn away from sin and turn to God, we will be refreshed, renewed, and healed in wonderful ways: "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9).
What weakens your love for God? What makes Christ dull to you? Along with me, examine your heart and your life so that you can be a faithful single woman, anxious only about the things of the Lord and not the things of this world:
"And the unmarried or betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the Lord,
how to be holy in body and spirit." ~ 1 Corinthians 7:34
Learning more and more about Christ's freshness,
Christina
Soli Deo Gloria ~ To God Alone Be the Glory!
